'Old' Asus A7V133 mobo

[audiyoda]

A good friend of mine and co-worker here at MSU just purchased an original A7V133 Ausu mobo (not the A7V133-M or -C which are the current releases) with the VIA KT-133 chipset. After some discussion, he'd like to install the latest BIOS upgrade and chipset upgrade to this mobo. But we are at somewhat of a lose in that the updates Asus lists are only for the KT-133A chipset

My buddy would like to get moving on this system considering he is upgrading from a PII/250 to this T-Bird 1Gig. My concern is the upgrade path -- upgrade the chipset first (is that even possible??) and then the BIOS, or what? Could someone lay out the steps that we should take.

-Craig

[Alfie]

The chipset can't be upgraded,what you would do is flash the bios and after the system is set up install the Via 4in1 drivers (latest addition)
Here's the link for the bios,just stroll down the page and you'll see Via 133(A7V motherboard)
http://www.asus.com/products/motherb...ios_socka.html
For the Via drivers just do a search for Via.

[audiyoda]

Didn't think the chipset could be updated. We downloaded the latest BIOS updates and I somewhat expected something in terms of directions. The only think in the zip file was the actual upgrade (a7v1008.awd). I'm assuming I need to put this on a floppy and reboot to DOS. And then open the file from the A: drive -- the file will do it's thing and then just re-boot once it's done.

-Craig

[DrZaius]

Hi audiyoda,

Flash utility you need to use along with the flash file:
http://www.asus.com/products/motherb...ios_tools.html

Step-by-step instructions on how to flash the BIOS:
http://www.asus.com/products/motherboard/flash.html

Hope that helps.

[Alfie]

With the Asus A7V board,it's possible to flash the bios while in Windows.
I believe the program is on the cd that came with the mobo,or you can download it from the Asus site.
It's best to download the bios to a file and point the program to the file as opposed to auto update.
The program is rather cool and pretty foolproof.
The advantage to doing it this way,if in the event of a bios flash failure,your still in Windows and either restore,or reflash it.
If your using WinMe,download the latest program from Asus.

[audiyoda]

Thanks guys, you've both been a ton of help. We'll get to it tomarrow between classes.

-Craig